'I know my parents follow your work with great interest and we thank you for all the trouble you take and the help you are giving our world. My parents and I send you in America our best greetings for Christmas and the New Year, but most of all we wish you and those working with you health, success and happiness in the year ahead.

'So thank you again very much for your kind letter. Very many loving greetings from your friend, Sven-Georg Adenauer.'7

An echo from this correspondence can be seen in an article which the Chancellor agreed to have published in the New York Journal-American8 prior to his visit to America. It was not a literary masterpiece, being a summary of his many previous messages to Buchman and public statements about Moral Re-Armament. However, he commented that, for his part, he was 'convinced that Krushchev's grandchildren will not be Communists', and paid unstinted tribute to Buchman's own contribution to the rehabilitation of Germany after the war, to his work for peace over the fifteen post-war years and the continuing need of his message in the years ahead. 'At this time of confusion in Europe we need, and especially in divided Germany, an ideology that brings clarity and moral power into the shaping of international relations,' he began. 'A nation with an ideology is always on the offensive. A nation without an ideology is self-satisfied and dead.' 'Begin with yourself - that, in my opinion, is the basic challenge of MRA,' he concluded. 'May this challenge ring out far and wide across the whole world and into all nations.'

Buchman sat with the Chancellor's party at the degree ceremony and attended three other occasions where Adenauer spoke, including a small luncheon on 19 March. At the civic dinner the Chancellor said to Buchman, 'I must tell you how much I value you and your work. It is absolutely essential for the peace of the world.'9

Buchman was now finding it increasingly difficult to move about. He was generally moved in a wheelchair, his strength was strictly limited, and his eyesight continuing to fail. On the way to consult a Tucson eye specialist, his companions noticed that he was striving to distinguish the mountains, trees and buildings. Waiting in the consulting room he sat eager, alert, testing his vision on the crack of light coming through the door of the dimly lit room and the lamp on the doctor's desk. He had brought a book for him, already inscribed, 'To Dr Sherwood Burr, who is helping me to see again, with gratitude.'

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